When
Wal-Mart Stores
Inc.
publicly blacklisted about 250 Bangladesh factories this week, it said it was trying to alert other retailers of safety problems and prevent disasters like last month's fatal building collapse that killed more than 1,100 people.

ENLARGE

The clothing label on a shirt by Wal-Mart's brand Faded Glory, which is made in Bangladesh.
Reuters

But several other major retailers, including
Hennes & Mauritz
AB,
Sears Holdings
Corp.
and Zara parent
Inditex
SA
still consider some of those same factories safe and have received shipments of sweaters and other clothing from them as recently as this month, according to shipping records, interviews and company documents.

The contrast illustrates how differing standards and approaches can complicate efforts to determine which factories in Bangladesh are safe, even as calls for change grow louder. Separate from last month's building collapse at the Rana Plaza factory in Dhaka, scores of workers have died in a spate of Bangladesh factory accidents in recent months.

More than 30 mostly-European retailers including H&M, Inditex and France's
Carrefour
SA
signed an accord this week calling for more stringent safety controls in Bangladesh's 5,000 factories. The pact holds brands legally accountable for ensuring factories are safe or having funds to undertake renovations.

But U.S. retailers including Wal-Mart and
Gap
Inc.
broke from the group, saying that they didn't want to be held liable in U.S. courts if they were found to violate the agreement.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, maintains it can force change without the binding agreement. Part of its effort is being more transparent about its sourcing.

A Wal-Mart spokesman said publishing the list "encourages other retailers to adopt our standards and benefit from our in-depth inspection process."

ENLARGE

Army personnel gather at the site of collapsed Rana Plaza building.
Xinhua/Zuma Press

The Bangladesh Safety Pact

Some retailers signed a legally binding safety pact with a goal of improving garment-factory conditions after a factory disaster in Bangladesh. See which companies did and didn't sign.

Timeline: Industrial Disasters in Asia

If Wal-Mart's audits find factories that have structural damage or life-threatening conditions, "we will immediately ask them to cease production, inform the factory buyers and the government, and insist the workers don't go back to facilities," said Rajan Kamalanathan, Wal-Mart's head of ethical sourcing, in an interview.

Wal-Mart doesn't specifically disclose why it puts a factory on its banned list.

Violations can range from child labor to human rights abuses, bribery, corporal punishment, or hazardous conditions. Factories can work themselves off the list.

Some workplace and outsourcing experts said that Wal-Mart's unilateral action only adds to an increasingly complicated process of trying to improve safety standards in Bangladesh.

"It is not helpful for a retailer or brand to simply publish a list of factories they no longer work with," said Richard Locke, a professor of political science and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is working on several projects related to globalization and labor standards. "The truth is that factories go in and out of compliance."

Retailers, factories, and worker-safety groups say retailers' different standards have stalled safety-improvement efforts, triggering confusion over matters as basic as where fire extinguishers are placed.

"Every time a different brand's audit team goes into a factory, the factory has to move the fire extinguishers to be in compliance," said
Sandra Cho,
corporate responsibility manager for Columbia Sportswear, which manufactures some clothing in Bangladesh. "It's time-consuming for the brands and creates audit fatigue for the factories."

Several of the sites banned by Wal-Mart appear on a list of approved factories that H&M made public two months ago, before the Rana Plaza factory collapse. One such factory is Hop Lun, the Bangladesh outpost of Hong Kong-based Hop Lun Ltd., a lingerie maker. Set in an industrial park on the outskirts of Dhaka, it has been supplying H&M with lingerie since 2006, according to the Swedish company.

H&M remains a client. It says the factory passed an audit two weeks ago, and adds that it also recently sent an engineer to inspect one of the buildings.

"We believe that we have comprehensive and thorough systems and routines in place," H&M said in response to questions Thursday.

H&M, which is the world's biggest purchaser in Bangladesh, inspects its factories about every six months, which some other retailers also said was standard.

Target
Corp.
received an order of knitted padded bras from Hop Lun several months ago, records from shipping database Import Genius show. Prior to the ban, Hop Lun also supplied garments for Wal-Mart's George clothing brand, Hop Lun said.

﻿
Earlier this month, production was halted in one of Hop Lun's buildings after cracks were observed. The discovery came two weeks after the Rana Plaza complex collapsed a day after large cracks were identified.

Hop Lun closed the building for renovations, said
Walter Brennan,
Hop Lun's Hong Kong-based director of compliance and communications, even though he said engineers found it to be structurally sound.

Wal-Mart's decision to ban the factory came as a surprise to Hop Lun this week. "We find it incredible. We knew nothing about it," says Mr. Brennan.

Target was already breaking off relations with Hop Lun before the cracks were found, according to a spokeswoman for the retailer. Target, which said all of its factories have been audited in the past 12 months, didn't disclose the reason it was breaking off relations. "Despite several months of working with this factory to address concerns, the factory was not able to meet our expectations," the Target spokeswoman said.

In the Gazipur district north of Dhaka, Garments Export Village Ltd. was surprised to find its name on Wal-Mart's list and feared it would hurt the company's reputation, said
Emrul Kayes
Sujan, manager of human resources and compliance for Amtranet Group, the factory owner.

He said the factory hadn't produced for Wal-Mart since he joined the factory in 2006. From the 10-story building where it manufactures shirts, pants and sweaters, Garments Export Village works for retailers including H&M, Inditex and Kmart, which is owned by Sears, according to all three companies.

Kmart has received more than 200 shipping containers full of twill pants and other clothes from Garment Exports Village as recently as the end of April, shipping records show.

A Sears spokesman confirmed the company's relationship with the factory and said that it audits factories to comply with its own requirements. Inditex, which confirmed that the factory has made sweaters for its Pull & Bear label, said the factory has passed all of its audits and visits in the past year.

For some retailers, Wal-Mart's black list could become a useful resource. In October of last year, John Forsyth Shirt Co., a Canadian menswear company whose clothing is sold at stores such as
Stein Mart
,
said it got four boxes of men's shirts from E.H. Fabrics Ltd., one of the factories on Wal-Mart's banned list. The company is no longer receiving shipments from that factory, as it wasn't a regular supplier. The company said its safety audits are normally done annually, and there is also a locally based quality-control team that visits weekly during production runs.

Oliver Morante, John Forsyth's executive vice president, said Wal-Mart's list of banned factories is "another piece of information" to consider in deciding where to source future products. He said he would refuse to work with any factory that is "found to be in violation of any sort—structural or otherwise."

—Ann Zimmerman in Dallas, Tripti Lahiri in Dhaka, Karen Johnson in Toronto and Suzanne Kapner in New York contributed to this article.

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